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MEMBER DIARY

Competence and Trust

Presidential elections are importantly about policies, but they are also about competence and trust. The shift in this election has occured in large part because the debates have given Mitt Romney an opportunity to demonstrate that he is not the person that hundreds of millions of Democratic dollars tried to paint him to be, but more subliminally the public is seeing the staggering the gap in competence between “The Amateur” president and the “Bain / Massachusetts CEO”. Take a few examples:

- Financial management.

– Congress gave Obama a $787 billion “Stimulus Plan”, much of which went to ideologically-driven long term projects like high speed rail, green energy, and electric cars. Much of the money went to cronies – Solyndra; Tesla;Fisker; many more - and Obama joked that many of the projects turned out to not be “shovel-ready“. Along with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi he completelly gave up on budgets.

– Romney started as a management consultant, made millions successfully running Bain Capital, then saved the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics, before returning to Massachusetts where he closed a $3 billion budget deficit as governor.

- Fast and Furious.

– Obama and Eric Holder have refused to disclose who approved this “gun-walking” fiasco which resulted in the death of a border patrol agent and numerous law enforcement personnel in Mexico.

- Benghazi.

– Hillary Clinton is taking the fall for failing to react to what the Libyan president had called a “state of maximum alert” in the Benghazi area prior to 9/11/12

– Obama has blamed the intelligence community for his weeks-long efforts to characterize the attack by al Queda -affiliate Ansar al – Sharia as the spontaneous response to a video.

– Secretary of Defense Paneta is emerging as the culprit in refusing to provide available and sought after assistance to those defending the ambassador and the facilities during the seven-hour firefight.

- Bipartisanship.

– Obama ignored the recommendations of his Simpson-Bowles Commission, and torpedoed a potential “Grand Bargain” with Speaker Boehner by greatly increasing demands for tax increases after a tentative deal was reached. He rarely meets with leaders of either party.

– As governor of Massachusetts Romney met regularly with legislative leaders of both parties, closed a large budget gap, passed healthcare reform, and created a scholarship program for the top quarter of high school graduates.

Aside from whether the voters want larger or smaller government, a flatter or more graduated tax system, and more liberal or conservative social policies, they need, want, and deserve competence in the White House.

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This week we have videos of the competing closing arguments of the intellectually bankrupt Obama campaign and the “Two Clear Paths” Romney campaign. The momentum continues.